Key suspect in blogger murder case killed by Bangladesh police

Bangladesh police on Sunday killed a militant with a bounty of Tk 500,000 ($6,374) on his head for murdering secular bloggers, as authorities stepped up their nationwide crackdown on Islamists in the Muslim-majority nation that has seen a string of brutal attacks on minorities and activists.

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People gather on the spot where Bangladeshi blogger Avijit Roy was killed in a street in Dhaka in this file photo

“We have found out that he was a member of Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT) and one of the six extremists for whom we earlier announced a bounty of Taka 500,000,” a senior police officer said.

The militant killed in a pre-dawn encounter in Dhaka was named in a police list as Shariful or Sharif, but he previously used several other names like Sakib alias Saleh alias Arif alias Hadi—1.

The officer said Sharif was wanted for the murder of Bangladesh-born American science writer and blogger Avijit Roy, who was hacked to death by several men as he returned from a Dhaka book fair in February last year.

The militant was also believed to have been directly involved in the subsequent killing of another blogger Niladri.

The identification of the alleged militant came hours after police said a “miscreant” was killed in a shootout with police detectives in the capital’s Khilgaon area.

Sharif was a firearm and ICT trainer and key-recruiter of ABT, which along with Jamaatul Mujahiedeen Bangladesh (JMB), is blamed for a series of fatal attacks on secular or liberal activists and religious minorities, according to a post on the website of Dhaka Metropolitan Police.

Crossfire kills another suspect

Sharif’s death came a day after another militant, who was arrested four days ago while carrying out an attack on a Hindu college teacher in southwestern Madaripur, was killed in a crossfire.

The 17-year-old, identified as Golam Faizullah Fahim, was killed in the surprise shootout a day after police secured a court order to interrogate him in custody in connection with the murder attempt on Ripan Chakraborty (50), a mathematics lecturer of a government university college in Madaripur.

Bangladesh in recent months has witnessed a series of deadly clandestine attacks on religious minorities and secular and liberal activists.

But Fahim, a student of a college in Dhaka, was the lone assailant to be grabbed by people in the neighborhood. Two other attackers who were with him fled the scene. Chakraborty, who survived the attack, suffered critical head injury.

Islamic State or al-Qaeda in Indian Subcontinent has claimed most of the attacks. However, authorities have attributed the attacks to home grown militant outfits like JMB and ABT.

Clerics in anti-terrorism fatwa

Over 100,000 Islamic scholars in Bangladesh have issued a fatwa or ruling, declaring militancy and terrorism in the name of Islam as haram (forbidden by Isamic law) while voicing their concern over a wave of brutal slayings of Hindus and secular writers by Islamists in the country.